Most influential designers #5 Paul Sahre

This is the sixth part of a ten-part blog series, if you missed the first part, read it here. As part of their 50th-anniversary survey GDUSA published a top ten list of the most influential graphic designers working today (amongst other creative professions).

I’m going to work, in reverse order, through these top ten designers and establish just what it is that makes them so damn great and more importantly display some of their best works.

Who is Paul Sahre?

Sahre works regularly as a book cover artist and illustrator for the New York Times, however, this does not stunt his client list which includes; Academy of American Poets, Sundance Channel, This American Life, The New School University, The School of Visual Arts, Soho Repertory Theatre, Times Square Alliance, Abrams, Marvel Comics, Knopf, Little Brown, Beacon Press, Vintage, Simon and Schuster, Scribner, Farrar Strauss and Giroux, Penguin Putnam, Aids Institute of New York, Not In Our Name, Verve Records, Luaka Bop, Newsweek, Time Magazine, New York Magazine, Good Magazine, Saturday Night Magazine, Metropolis Magazine Seed Magazine, Maclean’s Magazine, T Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Esquire Magazine, The Society of Publication Designers, among others.

Sahre is the sort of designer whose work becomes one with its medium, a silent, unnoticed art if you will. Hundreds of images we consume and pass us by every day are designed, created, illustrated by guys like Paul Sahre. That book cover that jumps out at you on the tube, the weird images that appear next to articles in the paper and the pieces of design that have become one with their environments like stickers on street signs and comedic illustrations in novelty coffee table books.

It’s difficult to speak about Paul Sahre’s work without mentioning the sheer volume of it, since he established his Manhattan studio in ’97 above a Dunkin’ Donuts, he’s churned out hundreds upon hundreds of different pieces of work that feature on a vast array of platforms.

Sahre, like many of our influential designers, uses his skills to inspire and educate, teaching graphic design in New York City’s School of Visual Arts. Let’s take a look at some of his works:

Paul Sahre Book Covers

You may be thinking: “Is this a top ten list of influential graphic designers who work out of New York?” Well, no it isn’t, but next week we have Milton Glaser, the guy who designed the famous I ❤️ NY logo/t-shirts/every typical piece of memorabilia that’s sold kerbside in Manhattan. Realising the risk of that sounding like a negative comment, I should mention; the man’s a genius. Tune in next week.